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Modesty Examined in Game Theory Experiments

Interesting research, although it doesn’t seem like it factored simple self-censorship into account as much as should be done.

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Why do people make anonymous donations, and why does the public perceive this as admirable? Why do we downplay our interest in a potential partner, if we risk missing out on a relationship? A team of scientists, consisting of Christian Hilbe, a postdoc at the Institute Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), Moshe Hoffman, and Martin Nowak, both at Harvard University, has developed a novel game theoretic model that captures these behaviors and enables their study. Their new model is the first to include the idea that hidden signals, when discovered, provide additional information about the sender. They use this idea to explain under which circumstances people have an incentive to hide their positive attributes.

People often take actions that may be costly at first, but lead to reputational benefits in the long run. However, if good reputations are important, why are there numerous situations in which people hide accomplishments or good characteristics, like when we donate anonymously? Similarly, we often emphasize subtlety in art or fashion, avoid appearing over-eager, or otherwise obscure something positive. Why do others consider this behavior commendable? The team’s key insight into this societal puzzle is that “burying” a signal (i.e. obscuring information) is a signal in and of itself. This additional signal can have several interpretations: for instance, the sender may be unconcerned with those who might have been impressed, but who miss subtle messages (like an artist disregarding the philistine masses). Alternatively, the sender might be confident that those who matter to them will find out anyway (for instance, only those who have the taste and/or necessary wealth will recognize a designer bag without an obvious logo).

The scientists succeeded in formalizing these ideas in a new evolutionary game theory model they call the “signal-burying game,” which they detail in a paper published today in Nature Human Behaviour.